Requiring a College Degree to Clean Toilets

February 19, 2013 The New York Times article It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk shows just how bad the job market has become even for college graduates. Even a $10 an hour job now requires a B.A. degree even when the job has nothing to do with education:

Economists have referred to this phenomenon as "degree inflation," and it has been steadily infiltrating America's job market. Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that didn't used to require a diploma - positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters - are increasingly requiring one, according to Burning Glass, a company that analyzes job ads from more than 20,000 online sources, including major job boards and small- to midsize-employer sites.

This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor's degree: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.

This has nothing to do with becoming more technical, but simply a way reduce the number of people even applying for a job, which can often number in the thousands. Those with true usable scientific, technical, and vocational skills don't have this problem.

A college degree is no longer a path to a middle class lifestyle it once was, in fact a degree is becoming a joke. But if one can control the cost of their student loans they still have a better chance than those with no degree at all. It's become more related to drive and ambition than simply a piece of paper.

The bad jobs reports for March 2013 only makes matters worse. The economy only created 88,000 while we continue to import over 90,000 legal immigrants per month. While many of the immigrants are often low-wage marginal workers, they still out perform many of the lowest achieving demographic groups such as blacks pushing them out of the labor force.

Nowhere is this more true than with Asians that are pushing low-achieving blacks and Latinos out of jobs and elite schools alike. Here the anti-white race baiters are at a loss and can't claim racism this time. Or can they?